


How Soon We Forget

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [200]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Breaking and Entering, M/M, Missing in Action, No One in this Verse Is Especially Nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 21:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16879932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: A man breaks into Tony's house. Tony asks him why.





	How Soon We Forget

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: The smell of burnt cedar sticks to your sweater and you carry your stones wherever you go. Superstition sticks like that smoke. Tied tight around your conscious like a rope.

The guy was earthy, a real granola type: long hair, muddy boots, and a plaid shirt that sure as hell hadn’t come from LL Bean. He was rocking a serious beard and he smelled like cedar and campfires and he was, without a doubt, the most unlikely burglar that Tony had ever seen.

“I can explain,” the guy said, his hands going still in Tony’s desk drawer, his eyes lit up by _oh shit_.

Tony cocked an eyebrow but held his pistol steady. “I can’t wait. Mind holding your hands up for me? By which I mean, do it now please.”

Slowly, carefully, the guy lifted his arms until ten empty fingers were hovering in the air. “Ok?”

“Not quite. Come out from behind the desk and stand right there, in front of the chair. Yes, that’s fine.”

“Should I sit?”

Tony shrugged. “Is your bullshit story about what you’re doing in my house really gonna take that long?”

The guy went red. “Um, I guess not.”

“I mean, unless you’d like to relax while I call the cops. Make yourself comfortable and all that.”

“No!” the guy said. “Mr. Stark, please. Please don’t do that.”

Now Tony was a lot of things in his day-to-day life--ruthless, creative, intolerant of other people’s failings--but there was something undeniably appealing about having a beautiful man who was at his mercy and also willing to beg. Because for all of his Pearl Jam-cum-vegan, the guy he was holding at gunpoint in his private retreat out in the middle of nowhere was gorgeous, especially since he was doing his damnedest not to look terrified.

“What’s your name?” Tony asked.

“My--?” The guy blinked. “My name’s, um, Grant.”

“Grant,” Tony said, turning the word over on his tongue. “Hi, Grant.”

“Hi.”

Tony waited a moment, let the silence grow thick in the night air. “Now, you were going to feed me some bullshit excuse about why you broke into my house? And, come to think of it, how. How the hell did you get past the security system?” He took a step closer to the guy--Grant--a flare of fear in his gut. “Wait, are you alone? Or are there more of you fuckers in here?”

“I’m alone. It’s just me.”

“How’d you get in here?”

Grant’s lips twitched. “The security consultant you hired last year? The one you brought out from Seattle, Wilson?”

“What about him?”

“He’s a friend.”

For the first time, Tony felt a chill, something like cold fingers creeping under his dressing gown. “Really. Well, I know whose professional reputation I’m ruining tomorrow.”

“I’m not here to hurt you, Mr. Stark.”

“Oh,” Tony said, a little more shrill than he wanted, “this is a social call! Of course. Why else would you just let yourself in at two o’clock in the morning and start fumbling your way through my desk?”

Grant’s eyes were steadier now, the startled bear look he’d been wearing since Tony flipped on the light settled into something more confident. “I tried calling your office,” he said. “I sent your secretary emails. I even wrote you a couple of honest to god letters. I did start off legit. But I never got an answer. Not so much as a _thanks for calling, we’ll look into it_. So I came looking for answers myself.”

“Answers about what?”

“Someone who used to work for you. A man named Steve Rogers. You remember him?”

Now Tony was cold, a rough shiver shaking his body. “Yes. He--he was my head man in Afghanistan.”

“And some other things too, huh? That’s what I hear.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” Grant took a step towards him, a small one, one eye still trained on the gun. “He was my best friend, Mr. Stark. He told me all about you.”

“Did he.”

“Yes. And not in general terms. He was pretty goddamn specific.” He chuckled. “Not that I needed to be Sherlock Holmes to see it; not a whole lot of reasons that people come back from business meetings looking well-fucked, are there?”

Tony felt his feet sink into the floor. “I think,” he said, aiming for his everyday steel, “that you’ve been misinformed.”

Grant shook his head. “Oh, I don’t think so. Steve wasn’t a liar, especially about stuff like that.”

“Stuff like--?”

“Being in love.” Grant’s eyebrows went up. “He loved you, Mr. Stark. Did you know that?”

Another night, another lifetime--Steve kneeling in front of the hearth in the big bedroom upstairs, the fire bright and wild on his bare skin, his mouth red and wet, his lips mottled with white. _I love you,_ he’d said, rubbing his cheek against Tony’s thigh. _You know that, right?_

His own answer in return: a growl, a helpless, aching sound, a fist tight in Steve’s hair, Steve’s head pulled back so Tony could see his eyes, the high flush on his cheeks. _Good_ , he’d said. _You should._

They’d been more he wanted to say, a storm of bigger words he wanted to fight through--some way of showing Steve what he meant--but he’d been afraid to then; then and every other night they had, after, until there weren’t any more.

“Yes,” he said softly now, the word, the memory fragile. “I know.”

Grant’s hand was on the gun now, tugging it gently from Tony’s grip. There was the clatter of the chamber opening, the metal rain of bullets on the carpet, and somehow, stupidly, Tony wasn’t afraid.

“So,” Grant said. “Where is he?”

Tony turned his eyes up and found pale blue ones staring back; a color, he realized, not so far from Steve’s. “He’s missing.”

“I know that.” Grant’s fingers found his wrist. “But that’s not what I asked. Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You _do_. Or at least, you’ve got some idea.”

“He disappeared outside of Kandahar almost ten years ago, he--”

A squeeze, a soft crush of his wrist. “Stop it,” Grant said. “I’m not asking you to repeat a press release. I’m asking you what happened after. I know you sent a team after him. I know you went looking for him. I know you paid your friends in the Taliban hand over fist for their help. After all, they were your best customers, weren't they?"

“Yeah? And look where that got me. Nowhere.” Tony laughed, an awful, brittle thing. “You see your friend here? Huh? Don’t tell me you broke into my goddamn house thinking you’d find him. What, you thought I had him tied up and stowed in my desk drawer?”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

Tony flailed a little and got exactly nowhere. The guy’s grip was a vise. “I’m _not_ , jesus, man!”

Grant stepped into his space and bent over, got right in his face. “You left him out there, Mr. Stark.”

“I didn’t! I did everything that I could, I looked--”

“For a year,” Grant said. “You did everything you could for a year, fourteen months, and then what, you just decided to stop?”

Tony wanted to scream. “They told me it was hopeless, the Afghans and the feds both! They told me Steve was probably dead.”

“Probably.” Grant’s voice was lower now and Tony was suddenly aware of how big the man was, how strong; the grungy thing was hiding some serious muscle. “That’s what you hung your hat on? _Probably_?”

Tony swallowed around shards of real fear. “What do you want?”

“I want what you owe me.”

“Owe you? I don’t know you!”

And then there was a hand on his back, a broad mitt digging in claw, and his body was pressed to Grant’s, lined up long and tight. “Don’t you, baby?” Grant said. “How soon we forget.”

A storm broke in his head, a fury, and he could hardly get the word out. “ _Steve_?”

Steve smiled, a kind of thundercloud slash. “Hi, baby,” he said, his mouth looming over Tony’s. “Miss me?”


End file.
